Fifteen 30-gram cans of sturgeon caviar, apples, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, milk powder and black tea will be delivered by a manned spacecraft Soyuz to the ISS on November 24

MOSCOW, November 21. /TASS/. The International Space Station crew will have 450 grams of sturgeon caviar on the table to celebrate the New Year, the chief of the ISS nutrition service said.

Fifteen 30-gram cans of sturgeon caviar, apples, oranges, lemons, tomatoes, milk powder and black tea will be delivered by a manned spacecraft Soyuz to the ISS on November 24, the head of the ISS nutrition department at the Medical and Biological Studies Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Agureyev, told TASS.

A cosmonaut’s everyday ration, not for a holiday, costs about $532 dollars a day. It is very costly, he said.

On the whole, a cosmonauts’ menu does not differ much from that on the ground, but food delivered to the ISS must meet very strict requirements. Every product must have a storage period of at least nine months, but it must remain good for consumption for 15 months. Products from those that may be included in the ISS menu are tested for 15 months in a chamber at temperatures and under conditions similar to the ISS.

Aboard the ISS are Russian cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova and American astronaut Barry Wilmore. In late November they will be replaced by Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, European astronaut Samantha Christoforetti and American astronaut Terry Virts.